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Tale of a Mad Painter
In “Tale of a Mad Painter” (1935), Kim’s aestheticist tendencies are on full display. The protagonist Solgeo serves as an embodiment of the frequently expressed remark that “evil too can be a form of beauty.” Through him Kim explores an obsessive longing for the beautiful that is akin to madness. Solgeo is both the ugliest creature under the heavens and a painter of genius. His abnormal behavior and desperate final act to complete a work of art can be said to express Kim’s aestheticism.
Our Toes Are Alike
In “Our Toes Are Alike ” (Balgaragi dalmattda, 1932), Kim deploys his skills as a satirist and sardonic social commentator within a framework of literary naturalism. Here the first-person narrator contemplates the life of his friend “M,” whose debauched sexual adventuring has likely left him sterile. Though the text provides a window into the underlying patriarchal misogyny of the period, the narrator’s incisive portrait of the self-deception that M experiences when his wife unexpectedly becomes pregnant have a larger human resonance. The work also leaves an interesting footnote in Korean literary history: it created a rift between Kim and noted fellow author Yŏm Sang-seop, who believed that the plot had been based upon rumors about his own life.
Clear Commandments
In “Clear Commandments” (Myeongmun, 1925), a free play of imagination is on display in a story that in fact introduces God as an important character. The text begins in a realistic mode, as it explores familial strife between a son and his parents as a result of his conversion to Christianity. After death, however, the protagonist finds himself in a heavenly court, where he must justify a life based on self-righteous and self-serving interpretation of doctrine to a harshly critical and mocking Jehovah. In depicting a society in the midst of social ferment and intergenerational conflict, the story in many ways predicts Kim Dong-ni’s renowned “Portrait of a Shaman”, written a decade later, which also treats the collision of worldviews between a shaman mother and her Christian son.
KIM DONG GI
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Sweet Potato
Kim Tongin (1900-1951) is one of Korea’s earliest and most respected modern writers whose naturalist fiction brilliantly depicts Korean life during a period of profound social change. Namesake of the prestigious Dong-in Literary Award, Kim Tongin’s succinct writing style can still inspire readers and provide insight into early 20th century Korea over 60 years after his death. Finally, a volume of Kim Tongin’s short stories, most of them previously untranslated, is available to readers of English.
Kim Dong-won
Independent documentary director Kim Dong-won is perhaps best known for his 2003 film "Repatriation," a moving work that looked at the repatriation of North Korean spies to their homeland. The film won the Freedom of Expression Award at the 2004 Sundance International Film Festival. Kim has tried to shed light on the lives of poor and marginalized people with a belief that a film should simply contribute to making the world a better place. The book consists of critical comments, intensive interviews, a biography, synopses, and a filmography. Prominent film critics, Chris Berry, Jung Han-seok and Professor Nam In-young contribute their analyses to this book, giving readers more perspectives to understand the significance of Kim Dong-won's films.
Modern Korean Fiction
Home to the New York Yankees, the Bronx Zoo, and the Grand Concourse, the Bronx was at one time a haven for upwardly mobile second-generation immigrants eager to leave the crowded tenements of Manhattan in pursuit of the American dream. Once hailed as a "wonder borough" of beautiful homes, parks, and universities, the Bronx became -- during the 1960s and 1970s -- a national symbol of urban deterioration. Thriving neighborhoods that had long been home to generations of families dissolved under waves of arson, crime, and housing abandonment, turning blocks of apartment buildings into gutted, graffiti-covered shells and empty, trash-filled lots. In this revealing history of the Bronx, Evelyn Go...
The Unending Korean War
Dong-Choon Kim seeks to understand the true impact of the Korean War (1950-1953) on South Korea's people and society. How did key figures such as President Syngman Rhee respond when North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and what does this tell us about the nature of the South Korean state at the time? How did South Koreans experience the North Korean occupation and what happened once Seoul and other areas were restored? Why were so many people brutally massacred by both sides? How does the war continue to influence South Korean institutions and society? This social history of the Korean War addresses these crucial questions, exposing and probing the war's deepest wounds, wounds long concealed by Cold War rhetoric and successive oppressive military regimes in the South.
